Many of the ebuild scripts found within Gentoo's Portage have come as a direct
result of user submission via Gentoo's Bugzilla interface. However, a large number
of open ebuild requests remain in Bugzilla. This GLEP attempts to resolve these
requests.

As of the first draft of this GLEP, there are 1517 EBUILD bug requests in
Gentoo's bugzilla database. These requests generally fall into three categories:

1. The package is important to Gentoo users, but has simply has not yet made
its way into Portage.

The package is mostly unimportant to Gentoo users

No ebuild has been provided with the bug request.

Leaving these requests open does not help Gentoo. Not only does the bug count
become artifically inflated, but bug maintenance also becomes more difficult adding
to open requests that developers must sift through.

Furthermore, having a policy in place as to how ebuild bug requests are handled is
important for consistency and accountability.

Portage simply cannot contain an automated ebuild for every software package available.
Ebuilds that are included are done so mostly based on the whim and knowledge of
developers. Many software packages are of interest only to a small subset of end users,
and as such would be a misuse of resources by including in Portage.

The (systematic) denial of the inclusion of ebuilds into the Portage tree may leave
some users to feel slighted because their ebuild was not accepted into Portage.
This is an unfortunate side effect of a system that relies on acceptal or denial.